Welcome, Travelers, to the Editorial Lane on the Black Information Highway and The Mid-South Tribune ONLINE...Welcome, Travelers, to the 21st Century Underground Railroad...

Posted April 30, 2010

An Editorial from The
Mid-South Tribune

A QUALIFIED SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE

The U.S. Supreme Court has an
open seat and this time, hopefully, it will open to an African American woman.

This is not to say that one
chooses a Black woman candidate merely because she is a Black woman, but rather
because she is also qualified. There are some extremely capable African American
women judges who can take a seat on the nation’s highest court, one of whom is
Judge Bernice Bouie Donald.

Judge Donald already has the
distinction of being a sitting federal court judge (United States District
Court, Western District of Tennessee), which makes her a bona fied
candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. She is the first African American woman
federal judge in Tennessee, which also puts her among a handful of women and
African American women federal judges in the United States of America. In
addition, she was the first African American woman judge in the State of
Tennessee. When she was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1996, Judge
Donald was enthusiastically confirmed by both Democrats and Republicans.

In 2008, the National
Association of Women Judges named her the Justice Joan Dempsey Klein Honoree of
the Year. Her concern for the community can best be demonstrated by her founding
an organization for at-risk children, working closely with the Memphis Literacy
Council, co-chairing the Hurricane Katrina Section Task Force—and the list of
these humanitarian endeavors could go on. She is highly respected among her
peers and citizens alike.

For over two hundred years,
women could not serve on the U.S. Supreme Court which was established in
1789—eight years before the birth of the indomitable Sojourner Truth who in
1851 delivered her famous “Ain’t I A Woman, Too?” speech in Akron, Ohio. Though
this declaration might not have been grammatically correct, it embodied a spirit
that catapulted Black women on a level of respect for their womanhood, too,
and was, perhaps, a presage to the U.S. Supreme Court getting its first female
justice in the person of the Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor, its first Jewish
female justice in the person of the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and its first
Hispanic female justice in the person of the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor.

It is time for another ‘first’;
it is time for the nation’s highest court to welcome its first African American
female judge, and we highly recommend the Honorable Bernice Bouie Donald for
this position.